Entertainment Weekly has our first look at “Orange Is the New Black” star Laverne Cox as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the two-hour television event The Rocky Horror Picture Show, airing this fall on FOX. Check out the full photo in the gallery below, also featuring Ben Vareen!
“We were on set and a reporter saw me and said I looked like the love child of Grace Jones and David Bowie. I said ‘That’s exactly right.’ I think we mix up the look more than they did in the original,” Cox explains. “It’s inspired by the original but it’s really our own take. It’s way more elaborate and couture. [Director] Kenny Ortega had this vision that Frank was at this old theater and found these old burlesque costumes and is, like, using them and wearing them now but has altered them a bit.”
Cox leads a cast that includes Victoria Justice (Janet, “Victorious”), Ryan McCartan (Brad, “Liv & Maddie,” “Heathers: the Musical”), Adam Lambert (Eddie, “Glee”), Reeve Carney (Riff Raff, “Penny Dreadful,” “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”), Staz Nair (Rocky, “Game of Thrones”), Annaleigh Ashford (“Sylvia,” “You Can’t Take It With You,” “Masters of Sex”), Christina Milian (Magenta, “Grandfathered”) and Tim Curry, the original Frank-N-Furter, who returns as the show’s Criminologist Narrator.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show follows sweethearts Janet (Justice) and Brad (McCartan), who stumble upon Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s (Cox) bizarre abode. Frank-N-Furter, a sexually ambiguous, flirtatious alien mad-scientist – with the help of his faithful servants, Riff Raff (Carney) and Magenta – is holding an annual, Transylvanian science convention to showcase the birth of “Rocky Horror” (Nair) – a fit, attractive man created solely to fulfill Frank’s desires.
Executive-produced by Lou Adler (Grammy Award winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee), Gail Berman (TV, film and Broadway producer) and Kenny Ortega (“High School Musical” franchise, “This Is It,” “Descendants,” “Hocus Pocus,” “Newsies”), The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a reimagining of the cult classic, which is celebrating 40 years of theatrical distribution – longer than any other film in history. One of the most popular films of all time, it still plays in movie theaters around the world.
